Hasta La Gadget!

While it’s not the first name you think of in digital cameras, Samsung makes a decent piece of kit and its SL820 took the top prize in our recent summer shootout. So we figured you’d want to know that its WB1000 compact with those smokin’ analog battery and capacity gauges is now on sale for KRW548,000 or about $418 closer to home. The 12.2 megapixel WB1000 features a 24-mm wide-angle 5x zoom Schneider-KREUZNACH lens and 1/2.33-inch CCD with 720p video record mode in H.264 format, max ISO 3200 sensitivity (at 3 megapixel resolution), and Samsung’s Dual IS optical and digital image stabilization to compensate for hand jitter. The viewer won’t disappoint either with a full 3-inch 480×260 AMOLED display rocking the backside. Why should you care? Check the video after the break to see how AMOLED compares to the TFT-LCD found on the Canon SD990 IS under different lighting and viewing angles. The winner is clear, no?

Continue reading Video: Samsung’s 12 megapixel WB1000 rocks analog gauges, 3-inch OLED

Filed under: Digital Cameras

Video: Samsung’s 12 megapixel WB1000 rocks analog gauges, 3-inch OLED originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Jun 2009 05:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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As a leader in home cinema systems, it’s always a good idea to keep tabs on Epson’s core technologies as a preview of what’s coming up in next generation home theater projectors. Today Seiko-Epson announced the start of volume production for its 0.94-inch HTPS-TFT LCD capable of a WUXGA (1920 x 1200 pixel) resolution for 3LCD projectors pushing 1080p. The panel supports a brightness of 5000 lumens (or more!) using Epson’s D7 process technology while achieving “higher than ever contrast” through its C2 Fine inorganic alignment layer tech. What this means is simple: expect to see a new brightness and contrast champion PowerLite Home Cinema projector announced at the end of Summer, as CEDIA tradition dictates, with product shipping by end of the year.

Filed under: Displays, Home Entertainment

Epson’s WUXGA HTPS-TFT Panel hints at ultra-bright, high-contrast PowerLite projectors in September originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Jun 2009 04:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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While you’re replacing your household incandescent light-bulbs with LEDs in a bid to save energy and possibly cash (over the 40,000-hour lifespan) you might want to consider these remote-controlled lamps from Sharp. The DL-L60AV gives you on/off and dimming functions as well as the ability to adjust the light in seven shades of white to warm up or cool down the glow. Best of all, they screw into a standard E26 socket for a one-to-one exchange with your existing ocean warmers. The features of the remote control are still unclear (lighting zone support, range of operation, etc.) but it appears to work with multiple-lamps in parallel which is a nice touch. However, we’d like to see Sharp integrate a Z-Wave or ZigBee chipset so we could link these directly (without special wall-switches) into a tricked-out home automation and power managment system. The DL-series start at ¥3880 (about $40) for simple LED lights before hitting ¥7980 (about $82) for the fully-equipped DL-L60AV and begin shipping July 15th in Japan.

Filed under: Household

Sharp’s remote controlled LED light-bulbs generate seven-shades of smart originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Jun 2009 03:18:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Looking for a way to differentiate among the ever-expanding niche of pocket projectors, researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering (IOF) of Germany are working on an OLED panel-based mini projector, using static optical systems and not the usual reflective system à la DLP. Currently being shown at SID Display Week 2009, the decidedly green picture (seems to be the norm with OLED prototypes these days) forms via a 6-inch VGA screen from 30 to 50 centimeters away, and the machine itself takes up just about ten cubic centimeters of space. Despite all the faith, there’s still the rather nasty problem of luminance, which the scientists estimate needs to be about four or five times as bright as current levels — but hey, you gotta start somewhere, right?

Filed under: Displays, Portable Video

Researchers ditch DLP, develop OLED panel-based mini projector originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Jun 2009 02:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You’d think — starting from the moment you saw the glossy sheen of the iPhone 3G S to the waning seconds of this year’s WWDC keynote when you realized that there would be no magical second model announced — that the near-constant drone of matte iPhone rumors leading up to this week’s festivities were all fake. But were they really? It’s been astutely noted by @cabel (yes, we just threw out a Twitter handle there) that the matte black backing seen last month has totally matching information — model number and FCC ID alike — with the actual device. We suppose it could just be an unfinished component, but as Daring Fireball notes, this could mean that Apple toyed with a matte finish early in the 3G S’ design but ultimately abandoned it — or even more intriguingly, it could’ve been a unique one-off trap designed to identify leakers who’d otherwise tried to hide their identities. It sounds like a pretty far-fetched conspiracy theory at first, yes — but we’re aware of at least one wireless carrier that actively puts out bogus information to achieve the same effect, and you might remember that Microsoft was rumored to have done the same thing with prototype Zunes back in the day. Either way, it’s a crying shame, because that glossless finish has left an indelible mark on our hearts that won’t soon heal.

[Via Daring Fireball, matte iPhone picture via MacRumors]

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Matching IDs suggest fake matte iPhones may not have been so fake originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 10 Jun 2009 23:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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